How can I use Cylinder Mapping on a complicated object?
The Cylindrical, Spherical and Cubic texture projections in Blender are oriented by aligning an orthographic view before executing the U unwrap command with one of the options in the window with that view.

You can have other 3D views open to keep an eye on things.

On a roughly cylindrical selection of your model you can:


Look directly across its equator, with its poles up and down. 
That's ShiftNumpad 7 with a latitude loop of edges (temporarily created and?) selected
You may have to revive the keyboard shortcut for rolling the viewport
Use options something like these:




Or you can:


Look directly down one of its poles
That's ShiftNumpad 7 with a polar face (temporarily created and?) selected
Don't forget you can H hide parts of your mesh to make these operations easier
And use options something like these: